Although, on the whole, similar both in the type of its crops and in the antecedents of its population, Manchuria has a far greater surplus production available for export than North China. The one is a new and relatively under-peopled country, the other saturated with population. But as the Chinese peasants, who con stitute the bulk of its farming population, are by tradition and practice subsistence farmers, there is little of the purely com mercial farming that characterizes the Canadian prairies. The surplus production that enters commerce is mainly of soya beans and wheat, both of which receive some industrial treatment in the region of their production before they are exported out of the country. A small sugar beet industry is developing on exactly the same lines. It is in the industrial treatment of field crops a large scale that Manchurian agriculture differs from that of North China.
To the Chinese the soya bean is a crop, like bamboo, which can be made to serve innumerable purposes (see under AGRICULTURE : China) and, as it has a great number of varieties adapted to varying rainfall conditions, its cultivation is widespread and in most districts of Manchuria it constitutes the largest single crop. It is estimated that of a total bean production in Manchuria of 6,000,000 tons about half is available for export, 2,000,000 tons of which originates from the zone of the N.M.R. and over 1,000,000 tons from that of the S.M.R. There was long intense competition between the two railways for the transport of this exportable sur plus to the coast, and between Dairen and Vladivostok for its shipment abroad. Of the total exported about half is of raw beans and half in the semi-manufactured form of bean-oil and bean-cake. These are products of the oil mills spread along the railway zone but focused especially in the South Manchurian ports, above all Dairen, and in Harbin, the railway centre of North Manchuria. At present oil mills are much more numerous in South than in North Manchuria but the latter is already the centre of surplus bean production and the number of oil mills is steadily increasing. The bulk of the export of beans and bean-cake goes to Japan for use as food and fertilizer and the bulk of the bean-oil to Europe for industrial consumption. After beans the
most important commercial crop in Manchuria is wheat, whose cultivation is centred especially in North Manchuria. Much of this wheat production is handled by flour mills along the railway zone which are most numerous in Harbin and Changchun (Hsinch ing). Of nearly 200 flour mills in the whole of China in 1928, North Manchuria accounted for 62 (Harbin 30) and South Man churia for 12. Flour-milling was originally introduced by Russian interests to feed the Russian population in Manchuria and along the Trans-Siberian, but the dominant interest became Chinese and the industry already supplies the greater part of the Manchurian market, once an American preserve. Only during the World War did an export trade in flour of any magnitude develop from the country. The consumption of wheat-flour in China is steadily in creasing and it would seem that wheat cultivation in Manchuria is assured of a continually expanding market.
The most important of all the Manchurian forests, the distribu tion of which has been indicated above, are those of the East Manchurian Highlands whose lumber supplies the needs not only of the Manchurian plain but also of North China and to a less degree of apan. These are being tapped in three districts—along the Yalu valley which opens out into Korea bay, along the head streams of the Sungari which focus on Kirin, and along the N.M.R. in its traverse of the Highlands. Logs are rafted down the Yalu and Sungari to Antung and Kirin respectively, whence they are transported by the S.M.R. into the plains of Manchuria or shipped by steamer across to Tientsin and the Shantung ports. The timber resources of the East Manchurian Highlands are therefore being rapidly exploited, but there are few efforts as yet at re-afforesta tion, apart from those in the S.M.R. zone. On the bare hills of the Liaotung peninsula considerable numbers of oak seedlings have been planted not so much for their lumber as for the needs of the tussah silk industry, dependent on the leaves of the oak tree. (See